wrote:
On 05/07/2014 7:15 AM, Pierre Smits wrote:
HI Eric,
First of all, OFBiz has a unique set of functionalities that caters
first to the handling of business transactions. Adding some
component functionality that isn't inline with that is putting the
handling of those business transactions at risk. In the case of
forum functionality related to eCommerce, it could be so that the
number of forum postings grows to such proportions that it might jeopardise the
transaction handling.
OTOH, if the forum increases sales to existing customer by 10%, adds
5% to the sales to new customers, reduces product returns by 30% and
reduces customer support costs by 20% it might be worth the extra
costs of scaling up the OfBiz configuration.
The reduction in transaction related to returns and customer support
might not offset the extra transactions caused by additional sales
but that is unlikely to bring complaints from management.
If the forum activities do not generate addition revenue or customer
satisfaction or reduce costs, you can always turn it off.
It is difficult to make business decisions or propose IT trade-offs
for organizations that you don't know or for general populations of
potential installations of OfBiz.
So, from a business continuity angle having both in/on one system
is not advisable.
Not sure that this conclusion is true in every case or that there
are not available solutions for scaling problems.
You can make the same argument for many features in an ERP. For
example, many companies do not mix eCommerce with accounting in the same system.
Apart from that, leveraging JForum with OFBiz data and vice-versa
is doable. But there are intricacies. You have to take the
following into
consideration:
1. You're JForum participants can also register without ever
using OFBiz
eCommerce. So you need means to get the user's profile data into OFBiz
2. When using LDAP as the means to do authentication and
authorization
in both JForum and OFBiz you need to set both up to use that.
3. For OFBiz, currently there is no integrated functionality
available
that updates the LDAP data when user details (userid, first name, last
name, password, etc) are modified in OFBiz. I expect that to
be the same
for JForum.
I am not sure that JForum is the only way to go and that is a worthy
discussion.
I would also add the suggestion that social networking tools that
support groups and discussion might be a more modern solution that
adds meets the same business need as forums but add ideas such as
"following", "liking", "rich profiling", etc.
Another way to provide this functionality would be to interface with
LinkedIn and use private and public groups. Facebook might also be
a solution if your business is B2C rather than B2B.
If you want to implement implement functionality in either OFBiz or
JForum to update the LDAP data I suggest you have al look at the
Apache Directory Server project (http://directory.apache.org). Not
only does the community have a (clusterable) Directory server and a
good LDAP management solution, but also api's that you can use for
integration.
Regards,
Pierre Smits
*ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
Services & Solutions for Cloud-
Based Manufacturing, Professional
Services and Retail & Trade
http://www.orrtiz.com
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: [email protected]
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
